Filmed in Moscow, Chelyabinsk, and California, this documentary is about several children in Russian
orphanages who are being adopted by American couples. Some of the children have minor birth defects
that prompted their mothers to place them in the orphanage, others were "unplanned."

We meet the children in Moscow and Chelyabinsk orphanages and learn their stories.
They are just past the toddler stage, growing up without parents to call their own.
We learn about Russian attitudes toward adoption, the orphanage system, and how these
children come to be adopted by Americans. Orphanage caregivers, doctors, adoptive parents,
adoption agents, and others carry this film, sharing their experiences and
points of view.

The same film may be used online in our Cloud pages, with the
transcript displayed on your computer or tablet next to the video.
Why, then, buy the DVD? We think that a teacher may prefer
using this DVD in class with a DVD player and room projector, and an individual
learner, too, may very well benefit from the DVD's superior image and sound quality.
For artistic impression and practice in listening comprehension, watching a film
on your TV is a different experience than working with your computer screen. The transcript (with no glosses or notes)
may be downloaded and printed.

Using documentary films for language learning fits our teaching philosophy.
We have done this again and again in our own courses.

A film by accomplished and talented filmmakers tells the language learner
much more about the foreign culture, people, and country than can be said in words.
Since a language learner is informationally disadvantaged to begin with, this
is very helpful.

By the nature of its genre, a documentary film is especially rich in carefully
focused information. An idea, an attitude, a controversy is what drives a good
documentary. This is the stuff that makes us think, and we know that learning
of any kind—including language learning—must involve thinking. Formal language
exercises with their typically disjointed pieces of information that have little relevance to
our lives are never as effective as a story that consumes the viewer.

Unlike a typical textbook exercise, the language spoken by characters in a documentary is
usually not scripted and thus reflects the speaker's personality and background. This is
likely to benefit the learner in a number of ways: unscripted speech is more
believable (and therefore more engaging), closer to the actual everyday language use
(and therefore important to experience), and is rich with all the irregularities of
linguistic reality (unfinished sentences, conversational fillers, on-the-spot
creative distortions, etc.) that very few textbooks tell us about.

Our documentaries are not filmed for language learners, but they are
edited with the language learner in mind. We tend to create short,
well-focused scenes; avoid excessive use of music and sound effects that
interfere with listening comprehension; and stay clear of ideology. But we
do not shy away from challenging the viewer, both intellectually and emotionally,
because learning is enhanced when the learner is engaged.

Slawomir Grunberg
is an Emmy Award winning documentary producer, director,
cameraman, and editor born in Lublin, Poland. He is a graduate of the Polish Film
School in Lodz, where he studied cinematography and directing. He emigrated from
Poland to the US in 1981, and has since directed and produced over 40 television
documentaries. In addition to the national Emmy Award for his film
School Prayer: A Community At War, he has won a regional Emmy Award,
four Grand Prix awards
at various international film festivals, several Best Documentary awards, and
numerous other honors and prizes.

Slava Paperno
has directed the Russian Language Program at Cornell University since 1991.
In addition to his many publications for learners of Russian, both in print and
electronic, he has published over two dozen Russian translations of works
by American, British, and Canadian authors. In 2000, he received the
Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy award for “achievements in computer-
and video-assisted language teaching” from the American Association of Teachers
of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL). In 2005, AATSEEL awarded
its Best Contribution prize to Lauren G. Leighton's Modern Russian Culture (available at
this website) that was designed and produced by Slava Paperno.

3-4 day delivery in US: free7-10 day delivery overseas:we'll bill you for actual cost